


End Transmission

by Sulwen



Category: Adam Lambert (Musician), Glam Rock RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-24
Updated: 2011-03-24
Packaged: 2017-10-17 05:59:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/173661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sulwen/pseuds/Sulwen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU.  The world has changed, and Tommy has changed with it.  But maybe, among the ruins, is a path back to himself - if only he can find it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	End Transmission

**Author's Note:**

> This is part one of a much larger story. More soon!

This night has only just begun.  
If there's discretion that you've not abandoned, now's the time.  
We'll burn to best the morning sun.  
Go grab your bag, I'll bring the gun.

\--End Transmission, AFI

*

The air tastes like dust.

Tommy squints in the too-bright sun. The road stretches out ahead of him as far as he can see, faded and broken asphalt shining here and there with illusory glimmers. There are no cars.

He digs a pair of sunglasses out of his bag and gives them a cursory wipe with the hem of his t-shirt before slipping them on. Sweat pours down his back under layers of black cotton, black leather, and he thinks longingly about taking his jacket off. It's a bad idea. He hasn't seen sunscreen in months, and no matter how much exposure he gets, his skin staunchly refuses to acclimate. Sleep is difficult enough as it is. Sunburn will only make it that much worse.

He resettles the straps of the bag onto his shoulders, takes a deep breath of hot, dry air, and starts walking. Another day of chasing the horizon. Another disappointment, nothing to find but _broken_ and _empty_ and _alone._ Another night colored with the sickening feeling of slowly fading hope.

And the next morning, he'll start walking again. It's all he can do. He's not ready to lay down and die.

Not yet.

*

Sometimes Tommy doesn't bother to find shelter for the night. It's dry this time of year, and the heat persists throughout the hours of darkness, often worse inside the confines of walls and roof than out under the stars, where a fitful breeze is often flirting over his skin, granting only slight relief but far better than nothing.

As the light begins to fade, though, he hefts his bag and finds it disturbingly light. It's been days since his last supply run, and that one had ended rather badly. His fingers brush over the revolver strapped to his hip, cool metal couched in smooth leather. They've been through a lot together, this thing and him, and it feels more real to him now than any of the people from _before_ – they only exist in his memory, now. Useless.

The revolver, though...it's solid and present and very, very useful. He remembers how it had felt to hold it for the first time, hesitant fingers, all caught up in nerves and something like awe. The awe had faded quickly. The nerves took longer, but Tommy had always been good at putting on a show. He's not sure exactly when the don't-fuck-with-me-I-mean-business act stopped being pretend and started to become a part of him, but he can feel it now, deep in his bones. It's there in the cool, hard stare of his eyes, in the stillness of his hands. He can remember a time when they were never still, his hands, always needing something to toy with, pick at, full of restless energy. That energy goes toward survival, now, survival and moving on, and the gun doesn't shake when he's aiming it, not with restlessness, not with nerves, not with hesitation. Not with anything.

He seldom aims and fires even less. The greatest use in the gun is simply its _being,_ right there in plain sight, pure potential. It's enough to turn away most anyone looking to cause trouble, and Tommy's good at avoiding those who are too stupid or well-armed to be intimidated. He never goes looking for a fight. They're good enough at finding him.

There's a cluster of buildings not too far away, close enough to reach before the last of the light fades. Tommy takes the revolver in hand and checks the chamber, makes a mental count of the little ammo he has left. He hates supply runs. The highway is relatively safe, as safe as anywhere gets anymore – open (good sight lines) and barren (nothing there to fight over). It's everywhere else that's dangerous, anywhere that used to be something.

The world is becoming more and more picked-over, one big clearance aisle (everything must go!), and the few people remaining stink of desperation, the only light in their eyes a hungry one. Tommy hates them, wishes he could shut off the needs of his body and just walk, existing as nothing but bootprints on asphalt until he finds...well. He's not sure what exactly he's looking for. It's one of the things he doesn't think about, though sometimes he wakes up with a blurry image fading into his subconscious, leaving him with nothing but the memory of _wanting._

He slides the revolver into its proper place again and turns from the highway with a sigh. It's getting late, and the only thing worse than scavenging is scavenging in the dark.

*

He comes to a gas station first, as usual. It's completely gutted on the inside, nothing left but empty shelves and scattered plastic. There's a pile of instant lottery tickets on the front counter, every one of them scratched. Tommy glances down at the pile, idle curiosity. The one on top is a winner – five hundred bucks. He laughs humorlessly. So many fucking useless things left, things that'll still be left when the world is dead and quiet, no one to make a sound.

The back office of the place is just as empty, and Tommy's already thinking about the best place to try next when he spots the door of the bathroom, cracked open a little. He debates only a moment before darting inside. You never know.

It's darker inside, but there's still enough light to see by, if only just. The mirror on the wall is dirty but unbroken, and once Tommy catches a glimpse of his own image, he can't look away. He can't remember the last time he got a good look at himself, and the face in the mirror is barely recognizable. His hair is ragged from the last time he cut it, a quick job motivated only by the desire to see better, get his damn bangs out of his eyes. They've grown long again by now, uneven. His skin is red, sunburned, windburned, hard-used. Rough brown stubble covers his cheeks, utterly failing to hide how thin, how _sunken_ they are. His eyes look huge inside this stranger's face.

He's wasting time and he knows it, the light fading more with every breath, and he's just about to leave when he sees something out of the corner of his eye. Something laying on the floor in a pile of dust. Something pink.

His backpack hits the ground, and he's scrabbling in the dust before there's time to think. He opens the tube with shaking fingers, telling himself not to get his hopes up, that it's probably empty, dried-up, just like the rest of this dying world.

But the gloss is wet and sweet-smelling and goes on like a dream, pink and perfect, smooth on his dry, cracked lips. The pose is achingly familiar, leaning into the mirror and pursing his lips out, rubbing them together for evenness. He screws the tube back together tightly and slides it into his pocket, then glances back up to see how it looks.

How it looks is, of course, ridiculous. But what hits Tommy harder is how it _feels,_ how it makes _him_ feel. He breathes in, pouts his lips out on the exhale, watches how the shiny gloss catches the twilight. A word floats through his head, one that should be irrelevant and somehow really, really isn't.

_Pretty._

He tears his eyes away from the mirror and goes through the ritual of moving on – hefts his bag, touches his revolver, turns his eyes to the next objective. But there's something new with him as he walks back out into the light of the setting sun, underneath the gloss, underneath the smile it brings. He can only describe it as a _lightness,_ as if something within him had been locked away under the weight of the world and has suddenly broken free again.

It's perhaps that lightness that distracts him, makes him less careful, makes him _stupid._ He doesn't bother to check out the next building as carefully as he should, just one momentary lapse. But one moment is enough.

He remembers walking toward the place, some mostly burned-out local restaurant, remembers opening the door, remembers one lightning-sharp glimpse of surprised blue eyes.

The blue fades to black in a haze of pain, and then to nothing, and for a while Tommy withdraws from the world, drifting in the emptiness.


End file.
